Taiwan's legislature is weighing a major constitutional overhaul, and scholars are pushing for a bicameral setup rather than a quick patch job — a story about Taiwan's political power structure, not markets.

• A legislative hearing discussed cutting Taiwan's five branches of government down to three, folding the exam power into the executive branch and the oversight power into the legislature.
• Scholars warned that scrapping those two branches only works if it's paired with a full overhaul of the legislature itself, since the current body isn't built to absorb the extra power.
• The top proposal: split the legislature into two chambers, with the current Legislative Yuan acting like a lower house and a transformed Control Yuan acting like an upper house, so they check each other.
• Experts also said Taiwan's amendment threshold is absurdly high by global standards, calling for both the legislative supermajority and the public referendum bar to be lowered so reform is actually possible.
• One scholar accused President Lai Ching-te of stalling on a 2019 campaign promise to hold a full constitutional convention, pushing only narrow fixes like lowering the voting age instead of tackling the whole system.

Outlook: Expect continued pressure on Lai to produce a comprehensive reform package, but with amendment thresholds this high, any real structural change will likely take years, not months.